


Modern Love

by chainofclovers



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-01-15 06:38:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18493447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: I got so tired of all of the subtextThe subtleties and the minute regretsYou were smiling like you thoughtI couldn't see youLike you're afraid of what I might reveal in youIs it better if I look away?If all I know I never do say?—"Kept It All To Myself," The Weather Station(Edited to add: if you prompted one of these stories on tumblr and would like me to add your AO3 username to the gift list, let me know! I only added those whose usernames I knew.)





	1. Pickle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Telanu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telanu/gifts), [ellydash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellydash/gifts), [eudaemonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaemonia/gifts), [parcequelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/gifts), [bristler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bristler/gifts).



> I've been a disastrously unproductive fic writer lately, so I took to tumblr asking for nouns and got the following: thistle, crumpet, pickle, tea, trestle, ephemera, cheese, and baby.
> 
> 300 words each (according to Google docs, if not the AO3 word count), answered not in the order I received the nouns but in the order that makes the most sense for the the story. Here we go!

“If you have to abandon our home to be somebody else’s wife, you can at least support my amateur fermentation efforts.” 

Whenever Grace isn’t waiting impatiently for Frankie to catch up, she’s a hundred miles behind. She should know better than to get distracted while Frankie talks about her hobbies. “‘Somebody else’s’—?” The wind off the ocean isn’t as loud as it was the morning she told Frankie about her marriage, but her voice still fades against the waves. They’re only a few steps down the beach from the house; sometimes, just for a few seconds, she tricks herself into believing she still lives here. “‘Fermentation’—?”

“Pickles, Grace. Cukes. Radishes. Watermelon rinds. As I was saying, I need a side project to take my mind off the debilitating loneliness—plus you can’t boss me around the kitchen anymore.” Grace hears her perfectly well. Frankie hasn’t always been so flippant about Grace’s obligations, but the marriage is already three weeks old. 

Although Grace obliges Frankie over the days that follow their latest beach walk, there isn’t much to support: just a cluster of jars in the fridge. She’s an observer, not a sous chef. She admires the progress every time she comes over—some of the recipes take only a few days, but even in that short time she catches a variety of nearly imperceptible stages. “Wow, it’s just like you see at the grocery!” she says, pointing at the dill seeds floating in one of the newest jars. 

“I may be an amateur, but I’m no schlub.”

Grace smiles. “No. You aren’t.” 

“Oh, God. Do you even like pickles?”

“Um. Yeah, sure. I mean, I’ve spent virtually no time thinking about them.”

“Until now?”

“Until now.” 

There’s something fitting about Frankie’s experiment: a long wait, a slow transformation, miniature oceans of brine.


	2. Thistle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With my apologies to Cuyamaca Rancho State Park; I've never been.

“It’s just a day trip,” Grace says when Nick insinuates he wishes she wouldn’t go. “She’s lonely,” she adds, hating herself for telling only half the story, getting what she wants by teaming up with Nick. He delights in being her partner-in-schemes, but Grace is embarrassed whenever they tackle Frankie—her tremors, whims, navigable needs—like backseat drivers or inside-jokers. 

But it works, and now she has a whole day with Frankie, and it isn’t normal, this isn’t a normal response to a day—despite not having a hard and fast ETA for their return to San Diego tonight, Grace keeps counting the probable number of hours left. She drives very close to the speed limit on their way to Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, as if avoiding high and low speeds will create a kind of stasis which might neutralize time. Frankie stirs restlessly in the passenger seat, humming a tune just out of the range of recognition.

When they arrive, it doesn’t take long to realize even the shortest hiking trail is too much for Grace’s knees. Frankie won’t entertain any attempt at apology. “Stop it,” she says. “It’s fine. We’ll wander around close to the Visitor Center, and picnic at the tables by the stream when we’re ready.” 

The park is full of late season blooms: goldenrod, prairie-fire, cobweb thistle. The flowers streak together in Grace’s vision, burn cool like a migraine behind her eyes even though their colors are warm. After so often standing with Frankie at the edge of the entire Pacific, there’s something tender about the creeks—their visible edges, comprehensible scale, willingness to rest against the land and cooperate with flowers.

“I like thistles,” Frankie says. “They’re prickly so predators don’t eat them.” She glances at Grace, and the hair stands up on the back of Grace’s neck.


	3. Crumpet

It was Frankie’s responsibility to pack the picnic. Grace sits across from her at their picnic table not far from the Visitor Center, no idea what will come out of Frankie’s backpack. Because she wasn’t there when Frankie packed it. Because she pulled up to the house this morning and Frankie was already standing in the driveway, ready to go.

“There’s no booze in here,” Frankie says. “I’ll tell you that right up front. Hashtag sorrynotsorry.” 

Shame, a slimy wet slug of it, streaks through Grace, doesn’t evaporate right away even after the chill is gone. “Didn’t expect any,” she says. There’s a difference between expectation and hope.

“I did, however, bring these crumpets I got at Trader Joe’s. Seemed kinda classy for a day trip.” Frankie wiggles her chin and shimmies her shoulders a little, as if to simultaneously mock and participate in sophistication. 

“I think you’re supposed to toast those,” Grace says, a revenge for _hashtag sorrynotsorry_ she immediately regrets. Grace doesn’t know what the fuck to do with a crumpet. She only said something because she can read the heating instructions on the package. 

Frankie seems flustered by the feedback. _Frankie_ , who didn’t bat an eye at Grace’s keys in the birthday cake, who squatted her even after years of insults. “Well,” she says, rummaging for the next item. “We’ve also got the house-made pickle tray. Except—except this is a state park—and this is the pickle—Tupperware container—”

“Oh. Frankie. Don’t cry.” Grace regrets that too, because Frankie was the one who taught her not to shut someone down with a _don’t cry_ when you could validate their emotional state with a _let it all out_.

Grace eats a lot of pickles, eats more than Frankie does, compliments every variety, goes back for more and more and more.


	4. Tea

It was exciting to rush back to the car when the skies opened over Cuyamaca Rancho, but after an hour driving with reduced visibility, Grace is mostly aware of her tense posture and still-sopping clothes. 

When Grace pulls up to the house, Frankie says, “It’ll take you at least thirty minutes to get back to Nick’s in this mess. You can come up and change.” 

Frankie has never explained why Grace is welcome in the house some days and not others, why she waited outside this morning but sometimes wants Grace to come inside to look at pickle jars and sit in the kitchen drinking coffee. Inside, it doesn’t feel possible to go up to her old bedroom and choose from the clothes they both know are still there. (“You can’t come and go all the time,” Frankie said the week Grace moved out. “Think of this as a storage unit, not a second house.”) Frankie sets her backpack on the counter. “I’ll grab you something while I’m changing,” she says. “I’ll be right back.” 

Grace puts the teakettle on, pulls the crumpets from the backpack and tosses a few in the toaster, busies herself pulling butter and cherry preserves from the fridge, knives from the drawer. 

“Oh,” Frankie says softly when she comes back and sees the impromptu tea in motion. She stands next to Grace and hands her a t-shirt and sweater from her own closet, nothing particularly flamboyant about her selection.

Grace points to another room with her chin. “Should I—?”

But Frankie reaches out, touches Grace’s wet sleeve, flashes an almost unreadable smile. Grace’s heart pounds. She and Frankie hold hands, fight, hold each other, follow each other around, but their intimacy has never included undressing. 

The kettle whistles and they startle, propelled into busyness again.


	5. Ephemera

Grace stirs with the early sun, registers the sound of the shower running, and in that moment when wakefulness takes over for sleep, her brain reaches to collect yesterday’s details so they don’t scatter, to have them under the covers with her, to be alone with them while she can.

If it hadn’t rained, they’d have stayed out longer, timed their return so they could stop for dinner on the way home. Instead, she made it back to Nick’s by dinnertime, not hungry anymore. In the elevator to the penthouse, she’d pulled Frankie’s sweater closer to her body, breathing it in with the knowledge she’d wear it for another ten minutes tops. Before that, she and Frankie had sat with strong black tea and toasted crumpets dripping with butter and preserves, such a contrast to the pickles, though those were surprisingly competent for a first effort. Before that—after Grace silenced the kettle but before they sat down for tea—they’d stood together in the storm-darkened kitchen, and Grace took off her wet blouse, aware of Frankie looking at her, and Frankie handed her a clean kitchen towel but didn’t quite let go, asked if it was okay to help her dry off. Then Frankie pulled the impossibly soft t-shirt over Grace’s head, guided her arms through the sleeves with a reverence not usually afforded an old friend, nor an old shirt with “The Kinks” on the front, a souvenir Frankie managed to keep forever.

Grace misses the shirt against her skin, wants it under the covers with her. She reaches for her phone. Frankie’s sent a 2 a.m. text, more ephemera-turned-forever, this time by the internet: _thank you for our day <3 _

_I don’t want to give your clothes back_ , Grace writes, and imagines Frankie waking up to the words.


	6. Trestle

Grace always liked the morning after moment in the movies, when the woman has slept with the man for the first time and puts on his discarded dress shirt and wears it at breakfast like a badge of pride. Like she’s the first person to think of doing such a thing. _You got me_ , the shirt seems to help her say, _but I’ve got you, too_. 

She tried it once, the morning after one of the earliest nights Robert stayed over at her first San Diego apartment. The night before, he’d laid his shirt on her vanity table, and she looked at herself in the mirror as she buttoned it, tried to think happily about Robert taking a shower not ten feet away. The pale blue shirt smelled like his cologne, and more faintly of sweat. In it she looked like a kid dressing up as a businessman. She took off the shirt in a hurry, scrambled to put her pajamas on and start coffee in the kitchenette before Robert could emerge and suggest going out for omelettes.

Unlike the rest of the penthouse, Nick’s guest room has an south-facing window. Grace stands in front of it wearing Frankie’s Kinks shirt, looking out from a new angle at the night-carved lightlines of her most familiar city. Her throat is drought dry after so many apologies, her brain full of the feeling of leaving in the morning. Nick knows. Frankie knows. Grace keeps taking handfuls of the shirt in her hand, then smoothing the cotton against her torso again. Tomorrow she’ll board a train that will take her up the coast for two days, and down again not long after that, the engine the only thing moving her forward, the tracks and trestles doing all the work to hold her up.


	7. Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go to my [#grace and frankie modern love 2019](https://chainofclovers.tumblr.com/tagged/grace-and-frankie-modern-love-2019) tag on tumblr to see a map of Grace's train route. She spends about 24 hours on the train in each direction, with a stay in Dunsmuir, "home of the the best water on Earth," in the middle.

On the train Grace has only one job, which is to let her thoughts run free. To find out what she thinks about when she’s alone by choice for the first time.

She’s never felt safer than she does on the train, peering out her window at the glittering ocean. Getting married was supposed to be safe—the abundant safety of ending each day with someone. But she spent the marriage fighting for scraps of time with Frankie. In marrying Nick she’d done what she always does: create unnecessary scarcity. She’s finished with that now. Alone, then not-alone.

Frankie offered to take her to the station, but Grace insisted on the aloneness of a cab. “Wait up for me when I come home, please?” she asked. When she takes the same route in reverse, five days from now, the train will return to San Diego in the middle of the night. She’ll take a cab then, too, wide awake on the drive back to La Jolla, will see Frankie for the first time since they decided—

When her thoughts run free, she mostly thinks about Frankie.

Grace’s phone buzzes. Frankie’s texted.

> _Ba_
> 
> _by_

Frankie texts again shortly after:

> _Oh god was practicing typing you sexy things for when you return an honest woman, tried deleting but got into a little return situation then a spacing situation and then a sending accidentally situation_

“Young lady,” says the middle-aged man across the aisle. Grace has avoided him since he got on board. “Young lady,” he says again. Fucking hell, he’s talking to her. “There’s only one thing that could make a woman smile like that, and that’s a gentleman.”

“Oh my God,” Grace says, and it hits her: she doesn’t have to say anything else. She turns back to the window, still smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I fully realize this is the second time I've made Frankie a failed sexter in a fic; she's just such a nervous and earnest and enthusiastic lady!)


	8. Thresholds and Cheese

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured if I'm going to write cheese-fic for my literal wife, I might as well add one of my own favorite nouns to the mix. And so, instead of 300 words on cheese, here's 600 words on thresholds and cheese to conclude this story. <3
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear what you think!

Grace returns in the middle of the night, crosses from train to cab to house. The house envelops her, Frankie envelops her, Frankie kisses her, Frankie gives her food and a nightcap, Frankie lays out a towel and pajamas while Grace washes away the invisible grime of travel. Frankie waits in Grace’s bed.

Grace wasn’t sure if it would happen so soon, sex, but they both want it, and when it happens in the still-middle of that long night it doesn’t feel soon. This is her reentry, the moment she kept imagining from the otherworldliness of the train, her homecoming—and Frankie enters her again and again, each motion returning her to her home, coming in Frankie’s arms, and then inside Frankie, because she comes again when she feels Frankie come around her fingers. Pulse, heartbeat, drumbeat; arrival and arrival and arrival. 

When it’s over, part of her worries they have to talk about her mistake now. Again. But Frankie kisses her forehead, says “I’m so glad you’re home,” and then the room is dark. 

The next day is thick with sleepiness. By early evening they’re on the couch together. Frankie wears a t-shirt, no bra, no long sleeves, a compliment for Grace, and Grace touches her, and it makes Frankie shove a hand up her own shirt, their fingers meeting through the thin fabric. Grace feels a sob roll through her. If she exhales, she’ll start to cry—long night, long day, home after absence, those strengths and weaknesses. It’s inevitable, breathing, and the tears come. “Baby,” Frankie says, in real three-dimensional life this time. “It’s okay. Let it out.” 

They’ve just gotten rid of Frankie’s shirt altogether when a key turns in the lock and the front door opens. “Hey, Frankie!” Brianna yells. 

“Oh, shit,” Frankie mutters. She wraps a blanket from the back of the couch around herself. If the goal is to make oneself technically decent, the blanket does the trick. If the goal is to imply a fully-clothed person lounges beneath it, the blanket is insufficient. 

“I know I didn’t text, but I do wanna say hi to mom, wherever she is, and Thursday’s Thursday, right? I got brie! And a sheep’s milk Cabrales thing.”

“Baaaaaa,” Frankie bleats.

“Just gonna grab some of those pickles and I’ll be right in!”

“I think I’m double-booked,” Frankie says mildly.

“Seems like it,” says Grace, voice warbly and awful.

Brianna stops short when she enters the room, arms full of Grace’s favorite cutting board, a pickle jar, knives, blocks of cheese, a box of Triscuits. “Mom. You’re here. You’re crying. And there’s a ninety percent chance Frankie’s shirtless, considering the shirt on the floor and the weirdness with the blanket. And I’m—I’m narrating. Is this really happening?”

Frankie turns to Grace. “This is Get High and Eat Cheese Night, a Thursday ritual. Kinda like how we’re just starting Touch Boobs and Cry Night. Except I completely spaced it, and for this week only, these very distinct events are experiencing some unfortunate overlap.”

“I can leave,” Brianna says, “very quickly. Except I really, really want some of your pot, Frankie, and I haven’t seen Mom in about a thousand years.” 

She isn’t surprised, Grace realizes. Because she already knows. She's embarrassed, but unshocked, and only embarrassed on the surface, because she marched in with cheese, focused on her own tradition. 

“Just leave for two minutes,” Grace says. “For the sake of Frankie’s shirt. I’ll go with you.”

Grace looks back at Frankie as she follows Brianna the kitchen. They grin at each other, like even two minutes will be too long.


End file.
